Working with Wet Wood In the Wet Wood

 

I was out in the woods behind my house, and I came across a lot of branches and roots scattered about. Everything is so wet and broken after a week of rain and wind. As I was looking at the variety of shapes and sizes of branches and how they interacted with each other, a deer wandered across an open space and into the shadows of the trees its feet silent on the soft ground. Like a creature from a dream, it moved slowly and continuously disappearing as it went under the trees.

I gathered some branches and carried them back to a flat open space behind the garage in back of my house. I remember what Andy Goldsworthy said about the work keeping you warm when it is going well. I can’t say objectively how it went, but I did not notice the cold and wet while I arranged the branches. I worked for almost an hour and as it was getting dark snapped a few pictures of my progress. I will work some more tomorrow. The branches are light and brittle. I expected them to be more water logged. I am thinking I should call it “Brittle Wood Weaving.” It is far from finished and some other name might occur to me. It is pleasant work almost like meditation when I am absorbed in it. Taking the pictures in the half light was frustrating though and made me almost forget how natural the rest of the experience was. Process is experience and product is documentation of the experience. The experience was good. The rest is not important.

Sunday Walk at Dusk

I walk back from the asphalt of the school playground

where I picked up a piece of wood

in the shape of a tree thought

blown from above in the wind

of  two nights ago.

I walk along the sidewalk home thinking

someone might mistake this branch for a gun

in the headlight glare.

so I carry it loosely swinging by two fingers

pointing the delicate web of lichen into the headlight

to reflect pale green above the gray silver bark.

maybe they see me and think

about the darkness that I am not.

maybe they only see me vaguely with no comprehension

simply a blank silhouette against the dark shadow trees

and the sky holding the last of the day’s blue around the edges of

oncoming clouds.

Maybe they see me and think.

 

 

 

I don’t do enough walking at night. It is strange how it makes me feel younger, a little adventurous, but not in danger.  My mind opens up in different ways when I walk in the dark. I become much less a visual creature and stretch out more with my thoughts, trusting my feet to fall right.

Before my walk I was feeling a bit harassed by thoughts of things I wanted to get done before my weekend comes to a close. Now I feel calmly ready to get what I can done. And I will let tomorrow take care of itself.

“Auschwitz is not only behind us.”

“Auschwitz must be comprehended in the context of its historical past, be recognized when it happens in the present, and not be ruled out blindly for the future.”

Gunter Grass  “A Father’s Difficulties in Explaining Auschwitz to His Children”

“My children have their doubts. They say: You don’t believe in anything anyway. I admit to my unbelieving life, and tell them: As soon as belief gets ahead of reason you can count on the demise of both politics and literature. Examples include the belief in one God, the belief in Germany, and the belief in true Socialism.”

Gunter Grass “Literature and Politics”

I have been reading a lot about the early part of the 20th century in Germany and the events and effects of what occurred then and there.

W. H. Sebald “The Emmegrants”, Ursula Hegi “Stones from the River”, Gunter Grass “The Tin Drum”, Roberto Belano “2666″, and a graphic novel “Berlin”, as well as many works by Kafka have been giving me some understanding of the enmeshing social and cultural atmosphere that produced the horror that was Auschwitz and the whole nightmare of the Holocaust and the insuing costs that left scars on the world.

Fear is the common thread that weaves this tapestry of doom. Fear disseminated by people who want to control the destiny of a nation and use it to hypnotize people and by degrees convince them to accept inhumanity as the only appropriate measure to protect their way of life.

Every time Dick Cheney or Rush Limbaugh or Glenn Beck speaks about what we should fear and why we must act on those fears. I am thankful that we have for the moment pushed them to side to focus on some of the pressing issues that face us as a nation. When they use the examples of Hitler and the Third Reich to paint the current political situation in blackest most fearful terms, they are actually using the methodology of the Nazi’s. I think we should fear unreasonable, unsubstantiated  fear and single minded devotion to blind faith in anything. Let’s think things through and look for evidence. Let’s keep our eyes and minds open to posibilities and continue to fill the air with our dreams for a world full of people who can discuss and celebrate differences without the shadow of unreasonable fear. Then Auswitz will be behind us, as well as Rawanda, and Vietnam, and Iraq, and Afghanistan and torture for freedom’s sake.

We do have a long way to go before we are far enough ahead of this thing that it can’t creep up and bite us in the ass again. Maybe we need better rearview mirrors, or maybe take turns looking out, but we have to know what the thing looks like in order to avoid it. When we are looking for a high-stepping, swastika resplendant mob it might sneak up on us in the form of some nice people concerned about morals, or anti-terrorist legislation to keep us safe. Your favorite relatives and best friends could be involved. That is how it gets in when we are afraid to disagree with nice people about their bad ideas and unreasonable fears. Fear is the monster that closes the mind to humanity: careful listening, respectful conversation, and diligent open-minded inquiry are the weapons that will slay it. These are the things that keep us  from reliving the horror of Auschwitz.

Summer Teaching and a Great Book

Summer Teaching

I have started full time at my summer job of keeping my little friends busy and safe. All I have to do is pay attention and go with their flow, and all is well. No paper work just being there for children and providing what they need. They have decided that Dr. Suess is great and have me reading the story of the pale green pants with no one inside them every day. We also have a great box project going, where each has their own special box and I provide materials for them to decorate it. There is one that has his moments, but I am definitely reaching him already after just one week so I feel pretty solid. So many calm moments of children just being and doing what is natural to them — learning about their world. Why do teachers think we have to interfere so much in children’s lives? Curriculum, I don’t need no stinking curriculum. I just need to pay attention and have a few ideas and some interesting materials. The children do the rest.

Short and Vague Review: 2666 by Roberto Bolano

I just finished a facinating novel by Roberto Bolano translated from Spanish, called “2666.” It is about so much that I could not tell you what it is about. It is written in the form of 5 novelas with vague connections to each other, some stronger than others. In the end I got the feeling that somewhere out in the future it all makes more sense, or maybe not. It is not very important. Like any good novel, for me, it was living a life in another skin, or experiencing the world from a slightly shifted dimension. I come back a little changed with a fuller understanding of life as a human being. Also I feel a little disoriented, like I only got some of what he was saying and maybe some of what he said by accident. I think the really good writers are not able to know all the levels contained in their work. There are shadows and reflections that are cast that they are not able to see. There are so many combinations of characters and symbols that interact with the reader that they cannot know what chimeras will hatch. I always come out of novels like this as if I have gone to a foreign country and my mind has not yet assimilated all of the strangeness and time of a different land. That is how I know it was a well written piece. It shifts my perspective and I see more of the human experience. The scope of what I have read has to linger because I am unable to process the whole experience on a conscious level. I am sure that bits of this novel will resurface in poems and dreams for a long while to come.

A Poem on a Magazine Headline And 2 Preschool Classroom Notes

Hot Vampires in Love

The TV Guide shouted

above the conveyor

carrying my groceries

to the supermarket checker.

Suddenly I missed

Warren Zevon.

Only he could write this song.

Note #1:  On Teasing

I had a large group of very active boys for the last two years. There has been a lot of teasing and a lot of lost tempers. The thing I finally hit upon with them was to talk with the 5 boys who were doing most of the teasing (They also were the ones most sensitive to it of course). Together we came to a pretty good definition of teasing and a signal I or other children could do to alert the teaser to his behavior. We decided on simply saying the word “Teasing” with our “no thank you” sign which is sign language for “no”. Within 3 weeks the worst offenders had reduced their behavior by 3/4 and we had very few temper outburst. I did most of the alerting, and I did it very matter-of-factly with no judgment, or as little as I could manage. One boy who was the worst offender almost completely stopped teasing behavior within 2 weeks of the start of our experiment.It so important to give children immediate feedback (especially with children under 5) without interrupting their flow or making them feel badly.

Note #2: On Exploring Emotions and Feelings

Emotion coaching is one of the only effective tools that a preschool teacher has to use when teaching children how to successfully integrate into a group and learn social skills. I think that teachers should be thoroughly trained to be sensitive, and use this in mostly one on one situations. Why would we as educators talk about water, sand, or kangaroos and not about feelings? We should explore feelings as freely as we explore butterflies or mud puddles. That way they may be less scary and more easy to manage.
Now if a child starts to disclose abuse or shows signs of emotional distress, of course you cut the activity short and check on the child as well as talking with the parent to report what happened and see if you can give more support to the child around whatever issues came up. In my experience parents often are relieved to have a sensitive teacher who is willing to give extra support to a child who is experiencing a crisis as long as you support the parent as well.